We state our strongest repudiation of Marielle Franco’s murder, a councillor in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the PSOL (Socialism and Liberty Party). Her murder occurred on Wednesday 14, at night, in the centre of the city, on her return from the event “Young Black Women Shaking Structures”. Marielle was benchmark for the fight against police violence in the favelas (shanty towns) and was critically positioned against military intervention in Rio de Janeiro.

Marielle Franco was a black, feminist woman activist, a prominent member of the PSOL and an activist for human rights. Marielle knew very well police violence since she came from Marè Resort favela on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. From a young age she began her political career as an activist in the defence of black women’s rights and in denouncing police violence. In 2016 she was the fifth politician most voted in the elections to municipal councillor in the city of Rio de Janeiro as a member of PSOL.

Her murder occurred a month after the president of Brazil, Michel Temer, ordered the federal military intervention of Rio de Janeiro. Since then, Marielle was appointed special rapporteur of the Council Commission, created to oversee police operations. The day before her murder, she had condemned the brutal and gruesome action of the Military Police in the region of Irajá, in the community of Acari. For this reason, her crime it is not at random: the car in which she was traveling was shot and her killers fled without stealing anything from her.

From the International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International (IWU-FI) We are in solidarity with their families, friends and comrades. In addition, we demand the investigation of the facts, a trial and punishment for those guilty of this crime. We join all samples of repudiation that have been made in the world and we call for actions demanding investigation and punishment in front of embassies and/or consulates of Brazil in each country. We continue the struggle of Marielle for the rights of women, against repression and the austerity plans from Temer.

Statement from International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International (IWU-FI)

In 1910, Clara Zetkin, one of the main socialist and feminist leaders, proposed 8 March as International Women’s Day at the Second International Conference of Socialist Women in Copenhagen; vindicating, especially, the more than 15,000 textile workers who mobilised in New York in March 1908 demanding a reduction of working hours, better wages, and the right to vote. Gone are 110 years since those historic days of struggle and our best tribute is to continue mobilised for our rights.

After a year in which we women have been protagonists of great struggles around the world against labour reforms and austerity plans in countries like France, Brazil, Panama, or Argentina; where we have demonstrated against sexist violence and femicide, from Mexico and Peru to the Spanish State, Italy, and Turkey; where we demanded the right to abortion as in Chile, Bolivia, or Poland; where we demanded basic freedoms like going out alone on the street, managing or deciding how to dress like in the Arab Emirates and Iran; this year in over 200 cities around the world we want to be protagonists of the Second International Women’s Strike in history. We want to show how we women organise ourselves, using globally the strike, the method of struggle of the working class, to curb the austerity plans that capitalist governments apply around the world and that hit us, women, particularly. The massive mobilisations in the United States, to mark the first year of Trump, account for this and with the slogan “Women at the head of the resistance” showed the fight is not only against the misogynist and racist verbiage of the president but against all his policy of attacking our rights. We will also denounce the complicity of the Vatican against the rights of women, such as the right to abortion and sex education without dogmas.

Recently, an Oxfam report published that 82 percent of the world’s wealth generated during 2017 went to the hands of the richest one percent of the world’s population. According to these data, the most affected are women, who suffer higher levels of discrimination in the workplace and assume most of the unpaid care work. This is why we are the poorest of the poor and we organise ourselves to face this capitalist and patriarchal system that overexploits us.

This 8 March, we have the great challenge of promoting the organisation of women independently of governments and bosses organisations that seek to stop our mobilization, with repression or diverting it to the polls, without attacking the pillars of patriarchal capitalism. Therefore, it will not be the day of Angela Merkel, Theresa May, Erna Solberg, or Michelle Bachelet, Dilma Rousseff, or Cristina Kirchner, because they are bosses politicians who rule or ruled against women’s rights.

Instead, it will be the day of gaoled Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi and the thousands of Palestinians who resist the imperialist occupation by the Zionist settlers; it will be the day of the women migrants who die in the seas or in front of the walls the repressors raise; it will be the day of Syrian women refugees fleeing from hunger and the criminal actions of al-Assad, Russia, the USA, and all foreign powers; of the Kurdish women fighters who suffer and face the criminal aggression of the Turkish army. It will be the day of the women migrants who do the worst qualified work and of all the women workers who go out to fight for wage increases, better working conditions and against employment discrimination.

It will be our day, of all of us who fight against all kinds of gender violence; those who want to end trafficking networks for sexual exploitation; those who fight for the right to legal, safe, and free abortion. That is why, from the International Workers Unity – Fourth International, we call to organize a great day of struggle on 8 March and to make heard the voice of working women who face the austerity plans of all capitalist governments.

Women will not pay the crisis. The governments are responsible. Enough of adjustment plans around the world. Same work, same salary. Separation of church and state Enough of femicides, violence, and trafficking networks Not one less. We want us Live and Free Legal, safe, and free abortion.

Long live the International Working Women’s Day! Long live our struggles around the world!

The armed forces of Turkey have carried out bombings in the Kurdish region of Afrin in Syria, and have invaded Kurdish territory. The attacks against the people of Syrian Kurdistan / Rojava (Democratic Federation of Northern Syria), which began on Saturday in Afrin and with the passing of hours has spread to the civilian population of other nearby cities.

The Kurdish militia reported that at least 18 civilians, including women and children, have been killed by the Turkish attack. This further aggravates the sufferings of the Syrian and Syrian Kurdish people, after five years of civil war, hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees.

Turkey intervenes attempting to crush the Kurdish forces in Syria because it considers them potential enemies of its State since within Turkey 15 million Kurds are oppressed who claim their rights and are also brutally repressed by the Turkish State under the dictatorial regime of Erdogan. There are currently some 17,000 Kurds in Turkish prisons suffering from torture and violations of their basic human rights, including 600 minors imprisoned with their mothers.

The Kurds are an oppressed nationality, of about 30 million, with their own language and culture, spread across several countries. Half live in Turkey and the rest in northern Syria, Iraq and Iran. During the Syrian civil war they, have conquered a partial autonomy in that border area with Turkey. Although the United States supposedly supports them, to use them in their intervention in Syria, now, in the face of the attack, they only asked Turkey (which is their NATO ally) to “moderate” their offensive. Imperialism is complicit in this criminal aggression by Erdogan on the Kurdish people.

So are Putin and Russia, who intervene in Syria to support the genocidal dictator Bashar al-Assad, and who now look the other way.

This new Turkish attack is part of the intervention of different imperialist and regional power armies, to crush the Syrian popular resistance begun in 2011, although they have contradictions among themselves. All these interventions have contributed, directly or indirectly, to strengthening the Syrian dictatorship which was about to fall two years ago.

We call for international solidarity with the Kurdish people, criminally attacked in Syria by Erdogan and his armed forces. We demand an end to Turkey’s interventions in Afrin and in northern Syria. For the bombardments and the invasion to halt. At the same time, we must demand the military interventions of Russia, Iran, the United States, Europe and the regional powers be withdrawn from Syria. We call for the unity of action to hold rallies and repudiation actions in front of Turkish embassies or consulates around the world.

Stop Turkish intervention against the Kurdish people in Syria!

Russia, USA and NATO out of Syria now!

Down with Bashar al-Assad!

Unconditional solidarity with the Kurdish people! For their right to national self-determination!

The Pope’s visit to Chile has aroused little enthusiasm on both sides of the Andes. Voices critical of his double discourse on sexual abusing and paedophile priests are growing. “I cannot help but express the pain and shame I feel at the irreparable damage caused to children by the Church.” This was the first speech by the Pope, trying to attenuate the indignation against the Church in Chile. A cynical speech when he comes from taking part, in Rome, of the funeral of Cardinal Bernard Law, one of the great cases of aberrant priests of the Catholic Church.

By Miguel Lamas

The Pope’s speech responds to the main questioning of the Church in Chile. Because of the abuse of minors by priests, the Chilean Catholic Church is the most discredited in Latin America. The most notorious case was that of Fernando Karadima, found guilty in 2011. But there are 80 accused priests. And to top it all, priest Juan Barros, a member of the Karadima group, and considered an accessory, was named bishop by Pope Francis.

This is one of the main factors the Pope’s visit is lived with apathy in a large part of the Chilean population. Several surveys show only 23 percent rated this visit as “very important”, a majority 50 percent said it is “little or not important”. Nor did it create great expectation and mobilization of Argentines, as originally believed. The Pope and his contradictions have begun to wear down his figure.

At the end of 2017, the Pope attended the funeral of sexual abuser Cardinal Law

The reaction of Chilean victims of sexual abuse by priests gained strength after the funeral of the former archbishop of Boston (USA), Bernard Law, at St Peter’s Basilica, held on 20 December last year. On that occasion, Pope Francis offered his blessing to someone who was accused of hiding and protecting a series of sexual abuses of children in his archdiocese between 1984 and 2002, reported in the Oscar-winning film, Spotlight. After the scandal became known, Bernard Law was forced to present his resignation as archbishop of Boston, but John Paul II sent him to Rome and appointed him archpriest of Santa Maria Maggiore basilica. Law kept his position in the College of Cardinals and in the Congregation for Bishops. Pope Francis continued this protection.

The Pope’s cynicism reaches such extent that even the wife of former Chilean Christian Democrat President Eduardo Frei openly criticized him. “I do not believe him at all”, said the former First Lady Marta Larraechea, according to the Chilean newspaper La Tercera. She reacted this way on her Twitter account when noticing the presence of Bishop of Osorno, Juan Barros, who is accused of having covered the crimes of paedophile Fernando Karadima, in the field mass that morning in O’Higgins Park, Santiago

Progressive Pope?

This double discourse regarding the abuse of children by members of the Catholic Church, both regarding Chileand throughout the world, is also part of his general policy.

Pope Francis cultivates an image of “progressive”, as critical of Trump’s most brutal imperial policies.

However, let us recall he visited Jerusalem in September and very far from solidarity with the Palestinian victims of the Zionist genocide, he took an “equidistant” position, he prayed next to the concrete wall that Israel built and isolates the West Bank, in the wall of the lamentations, and also in the museum of the Jews Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis. He said peace had to be achieved, “a gift that we have to search with patience and build by hand using small and large gestures in our daily lives”. Put another way, he washed his hands like Pilate.

In Argentina, he underpins Peronism and the union bureaucracy

Towards Argentina, which he does not visit, he shows himself as against the Macri government. It is part of his “progressive” pose.

Reality is that Pope Francis (the Argentine Jorge Bergoglio), who in the 1970s was a member of the Peronist right-wing organisation Iron Guard, now takes part in Peronism by supporting trade union bureaucrats and also social-picketing organisations.

The Pope wants to be seen as encouraging the social movements. But far from encouraging them to fight, it is the opposite; he seeks to stop with “dialogue and collective reflection”, any kind of deep confrontations against the anti-popular austerity plans.

In November 2016, Pope Francis convened a meeting of 170 organisations in the Vatican, in the so-called “Third World Meeting of Popular Movements”. Taking an important place was the numerous Argentine delegation, in which stood out the Evita Movement, the Confederation of Workers of the Popular Economy (CTEP), Juan Grabois, Neighbourhoods Standing Up, and the CCC. The organisations that went to the encounter in the Vatican insisted they were not “against Macri or any government in particular”. These same people now came from Argentina, in a large delegation of hundreds, to see him in Chile.

The own leadership of the CGT (General Confederation of Labour), at the time, raised a general strike “at the request of the Church”. Time and again the Church encourages “dialogue” to prevent strikes and whitewash the face of the union bureaucracy.

Francis assumed the papacy at a time of deep crisis of the Church, with a change of discourse and to a more “popular” image. However, day by day, both on paedophilia by many priests who are now covered up, as in the rights of women, as in popular rebellions, it is shown their supposed support for the poor and oppressed is just a double discourse. The Church remains the same sexist and reactionary institution that, for centuries, has been closely associated with the powerful, be they feudal, kings, or capitalists, guaranteeing their stability.

The images of 16-year-old Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi, the protagonist of a viral video where she defends herself from Israeli soldiers occupying Palestinian territory, have travelled the world.

Because of this, the young Palestinian Ahed is imprisoned and under military trial by the Zionist state of Israel, in the Ofer Prison in the West Bank.

Ahed is joined in prison by her cousin Nour, aged 15, with whom she appears in the video of last December 15 in front of the soldiers, and by her mother, Nariman, who recorded the images. The two minors are accused of “aggression” against the military. The adult woman is behind bars under the charge of “incitement” to violence.

The latest report of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) for the occupied Palestinian territories, which includes data from 5 to 18 December, says one in six Palestinian detainees for the protests against Trump’s declaration to recognize Jerusalem is a minor.

Ahed’s father, Bassem Tamimi, revealed on Facebook his daughter confronted the soldiers on 15 December after her cousin was evacuated with a bloody head.

Ahed, the young Palestinian fighter, is part of thousands and thousands of children, young people, and all the Palestinian people who continue resisting the occupation and usurpation of their lands and homes, since 1948, by the part of Israel’s murderous state endorsed by American imperialism. The struggle for Ahed’s release is part of the global struggle to end the enclave state of Israel and achieve a single, secular, democratic and non-racist state in Palestine.

We join the huge global movement that calls for the immediate release of Ahed Tamini and her family members. And we call to increase the expressions of international solidarity with fighter Ahed Tamini and all Palestinian prisoners.

Macri the adjuster and repressor took off his mask

Macri wants to claim victory because he imposed the theft to millions of pensioners with the vote agreed with the Peronist governors. But he lost more than he won. Because the repudiation of his adjustment managed to unite the workers with the pensioners and popular sectors, who took to the streets against this vicious fraud. So massive is the rejection that adds up to millions. Even some who voted for him in October because of the hatred and as punishment to the disaster of the government of Cristina Kirchner. For them, Macri’s mask fell. This is his great political defeat. The important thing for working people, although the law passed, is this unity in the streets that must have continuity against the whole adjustment plan.

A popular rebellion in defence of pensioners

Macri and many media want to cover this massive popular repudiation throughout the country with the tale of “violence by minority groups”. They do not say this response is provoked by the policy of adjustment and repression orchestrated by the government of Macri and his minister Patricia Bullrich. They want to cover with these images there were over 150 thousand workers and popular sectors in Plaza Congreso. And that there were demonstrations in Córdoba, Neuquén, Rosario, Tucumán and other places in the country. They want to cover up the wild repression unleashed on the crowd with tear gas and rubber bullets. They want to cover up that there was a strong national strike despite the boycott of the CGT triumvirate. They want to cover up the massive cacerolazo [pot-banging] that arose spontaneously at night repudiating the repression and the bill. They want to cover up that thousands returned to the Congress at night and were again repressed. But every time they find it harder to hide reality.

Already the popular mobilisation had made the parliamentary session on Thursday 14 fail and defeated the fierce repression. Such was the repudiation that the Peronist governors failed to discipline their deputies. Finally, the miserable bonus invented and with a little more money for their provinces, the governors managed to add their votes. Kirchnerist Peronist deputies posed as “opponents”. But the reality is they performed in the parliamentary “circus” while their governor Alicia Kirchner also signed the fiscal pact tied to the pension reform and their last presidential candidate Daniel Scioli was absent from the vote, showing his complicity with the adjustment.

Pensioners are robbed to pay off the debt and save the large economic groups

Macri takes away more than 100 billion pesos [US$ 5.64 billion] from retirees with the tale of the “deficit” while he forgives taxes on Coca Cola, Coto, mining companies and big soy producers. And he keeps paying millions of dollars of fraudulent foreign debt. The robbery to pensioners and the price hikes deepen the adjustment. In addition, they will try to continue with dismissals of public servants, municipal employees, with the labour reform and the salary attack. We can defeat him.

For that, we need to prepare to continue the fight against the adjustment. The fight must be organized from below because a fundamental change is needed. An emergency economic plan is needed. Those at the top are the ones who have to pay the crisis. Enough of paying foreign debt. We must impose high taxes on large economic groups. Money for pensions, salary, education, and health. They managed, for now, to impose the pension reform, but we must continue the mobilisation as it started in support of the pensioners. In weeks a popular rebellion resulted that neither the government, nor Peronism, nor the CGT triumvirate expected. Macri has weakened politically. He won only one vote in Congress.

Such has been the popular repudiation throughout the country that the traitors of the CGT triumvirate had to call a national strike. Of course, they did not finally take it to the end. The CGT “triumvirate” did not call to march to Congress on 18 December. UTA [Transport Workers Union] boycotted the strike. Despite this, it had a great impact. We cannot trust these leaders. From below, we need to organise and support those who fight and be in the front row against the adjustment as did the militant unionism and the left. We must demand the CGT break its pact with the government and call for a real national strike and a plan of struggle. We call to organise and coordinate that strike and plan of struggle to the CTA, the Federal Current, and other opposition sectors together with the combative unionism, to continue mobilised.

Money for pensioners, not for debt!

No to the labour reform!

No to the Pact Macri-Peronist governors-CGT!

That the CGT break with the government and call for a strike and plan of struggle!